Nancy Christie

Nancy Christie, Engendering the State: Family, Work, and Welfare in Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000.
This book is impressive on a number of different levels, including significance, originality, research quality and overall strength of argument. The scope of analysis is broadly based, extending over the entire period from World War I through the Depression years and on to World War II, and exploring the complex relationships that informed public policy, family and gender roles. Dr. Christie’s research is founded on a wide variety of historical documents, manuscript and printed, and alth9ough many of her arguments are specific to Canada she does not hesitate to range more widely into comparative history. At various stages of the book, moreover, the author brings her diverse sources together to reflect on the significance of each piece of the puzzle to the larger picture of family and social power. While she is aware of the lacunae in her own research, Dr. Christie reveals an unusual ability to valance powerful analysis and insight into family relations with a well informed grasp of abundant secondary sources. Dr. Christie chronicles carefully the gradual defeat of the Victorian maternal feminist ideal of family in the face of a resurgent patriarchy born of two world wars and the Depressions years, and in so doing exposes the patriarchal underpinnings of the ‘breadwinner ideal’ of Canadian social policy. Engendering the State substantially enriches our understanding of the ways in which the state intruded into, and ultimately shaped, fundamental concepts of social policy, family and gender.

Honourable Mentions:
Gerald Friesen, Citizens and Nations: An Essay on History, Communications, and Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000.
Gerald Friesen’s book is at once a work of synthesis, bringing together the findings of economic, political, social and cultural historians of the last few years, and a highly original piece. By focusing on how ‘ordinary’ Canadians attempt to make sense of their changing worlds within the context of several different communications systems, Friesen succeeds in providing a useful alternative to more traditional and limited approaches to Canadian history based on class, gender and region. This new perspective permits him to confront the concerns of scholars who argue that recent historical scholarship has neglected our national history without marginalising the experiences and concerns of disempowered groups in Canadian society. The book is thoroughly contextualised in the international scholarly literature on nationalisms, cultures and communications. Friesen’s documents of choice are personal narratives from a wide variety of Canadians, and their life stories tellingly deployed as exemplars of the major stages of Canadian socio-cultural history. By means of a close study of the documents the author examines the meaning of citizenship and nation in the Canadian experience, and offers suggestive new ways to approach various aspects of Canadian history. This is clearly the work of a seasoned and mature historian. Dr. Friesen’s book represents a formidable challenge to the historical profession, and should be commended for the originality of its approach and the insight it offers to readers. It will be of tremendous interest not only to scholars, but also to members of the wider public interested in the shaping of Canada.

Yvan Lamonde, Histoire sociale des idées au Québec (1760-1896), Vol I. Montréal, Fides, 2000.
Yvan Lamonde’s book is an intellectual tour de force, and a work of major importance in the field of French Canadian intellectual history. The synthesis that the author accomplishes in this first volume offers a wholly new kind of social history which to date has only been glimpsed in the works of other scholars. This is a highly original work, and one that reflects the fruit of many years of research and careful thought. Lamonde marshals evidence from a broad sweep of source materials and ranges far and wide in his treatment of social change, political crisis and the development of civil institutions in French Canada in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Time and again he demonstrates his solid grasp of the ebb and flow of the events and ideas which shaped the political and cultural lives of French Canadians and characterised the unique position of Quebec in the context of two overseas empires. Lamonde’s clarity of argumentation sis matched only by his elegant writing style, and his work will be of great appeal to a wide audience. Moreover, as the first volume in a fuller study that will incorporate twentieth-century intellectual history the book promises further insights into our understanding of the complex origins of social and political ideas in French Canada.